Fate/Grand Order- 3rd Anniversary Type Moon Interview (2/2)

The latest (8/23-30 2018) issue of Famitsu includes an interview on Fate/Grand Order with writer Nasu Kinoko, character designer Takeuchi Takashi, and main composer Haga Keita of Type Moon, to comemmorate FGO’s third anniversary.

Haga is asked about how the direction of the music happens, and he says that with part 1, he was told to make music for a fantasy RPG, and he worked from there. Part 1.5’s music was to be dark. Part 2 has no specific direction, but many tracks are replaced with similar but different ones, so it may be called a sort of reboot. Nasu says that Takeuchi had previously wanted them to use as few part 1 tracks as possible in part 2, and they did introduce many new tracks which he thinks succeeded in giving players impressions that part 2 was a new story.

The interviewer next points out how there are many younger FGO players who did not know of the Fate series before it, and asks the three what they think is the reason the game is supported by a young audience. Nasu thinks it is because they all have smartphones; Type Moon started with PC games, but at the time in Japan, playing games on PC required money and knowledge, meaning that it was a medium with a limited audience. They were fine with that, because they wanted to do what they pleased. When they were releasing PC games, their main audience was people who liked Type Moon games. Smartphone games are the opposite of this, however, with people who do not know who made the game trying it out, and Nasu says that he found this scary, but also thought of it as a good way for the games to meet new people. He says that while there may otherwise be parts of FGO that are tuned for a younger audience, he thinks it is mostly due to the change of medium that FGO is popular with them.

Takeuchi says that Type Moon’s games start with Nasu’s stories and worlds, and are completed by the people who like them. It turned out that many new people liked them as well when they spread to a new medium, but Type Moon’s primary philosophy of just doing what they think is fun remains unchanged. He also credits Delight Works and Shiokawa with helping to spread the game. He also says that Delight Works almost never asks anything of them, and that in most cases it is Nasu proposing something and Delight Works suggesting how to implement it.

The interviewer asks which of Nasu’s proposals stood out, and Nasu brings up part 1’s final chapter’s raid event, saying that he wanted to have an event that had people interacting and cooperating with each other that led up to the ending. Takeuchi says that most smartphone games do not the goal of the player reaching an ending, but in the very first meeting, Nasu said that he wanted to make it a game with an ending, and that he wanted to make it a game where all the players work together in a raid event, clear it, and are greeted with a new year. This became a pillar for them work around.

Nasu also mentions that because there was an increase in players at the start of 2016, he started to want to continue the story for as long as he had new ideas. He thus started foreshadowing part 2 from around chapter 5 of part 1, with the hopes that he would be able to reach another catharsis on the level of the final battle of part 1 a few years later.

Next, the interviewer asks the three what they think identifies FGO. Nasu says that Fate is an urban occult fantasy, and that the genre tends to become dark and cold when handled seriously. FGO is made to be less dark, and more adventure-like, and he says that this is what defines it. Takeuchi says that he does not consider FGO to be any different from Fate, saying that Nasu writes “art” and “playful” things, with art being things like DDD and Kara no Kyoukai, and playful things being Type Moon’s April fool events. FGO has main scenarios representing Nasu’s “art” side, and events representing his “playful” side, and so have all of Nasu’s good parts in together, and this is what he thinks defines it. Haga says that they are fundamentally the same, but he thinks that while the previous games had a base of occult with a taste of fantasy, FGO has a base of fantasy.

Takeuchi says that Haga’s music is also a pillar that holds FGO up, and Nasu mentions how he managed to come up with a soundtrack for chapter 1 of part 2 with just the words “themes are Russia and cold, in a severe kind of way”. He also brings up how the theme for the knights of the round table in chapter 6 of part 1 was ordered as “like The Sword of Promised Victory, only evil”, and how he was particularly impressed by the 2017 Halloween event’s battle theme which not only perfectly fit his order of “tokusatsu-like, kind of old but catchy” but also turned out to be a remix of Elizabeth’s theme, which he found amazing.

The interview concludes with them saying that they will be working towards FGO’s fourth and fifth anniversaries, and an ideal ending for part 2.

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